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One of the things that irk me most about bento-ing is the cleaning up of the bento boxes after. It gets tougher to clean if I had prepared a bento with gravy which is rather oily, or curry. Because most bento boxes are plastic, oil and grease tends to stick to the surface and since I only get to wash them after I get back from work, I have to use a lot of detergent (and strength!).

Most of the time, I would rinse it out with a little bit of soap after I am done with lunch at work, but that does not happen all the time.

So what do I do to minimize the hassle?

I recently bought a set of Pyrex containers, that came with covers (they were on sale!). Pyrex is made of glass and so cleaning oil and grease off of glass is a breeze!

The downside is, of course, glass containers tend to be rather heavy, and there is a (slight) tendency of breakage. But apart from that, these containers work rather well. They are safe for the freezer, microwave and steamer – just don’t put them directly over the stove though!

Yesterday I packed my hubby’s bento by including a small Pyrex bowl of Chicken Six-Flavor Soup. In the main bento, there was some Hainanese Chicken rice, with slices of cucumber, and a side dish of leftover tofu from our restaurant outing the day before.

The Pyrex bowl is a great substitute for the thermos flask, if you are a soup-lover like me. You’ll need to be able to heat it up before you drink it though! And soup has such a feel-good factor to it, don’t you think so?

I tried stir-frying some bitter gourd with eggs and shrimp last night, and since it turned out okay, I packed it for lunch today. I also made some Hainanese chicken rice with some steamed chicken. What was missing was the cili padi!